nanowrimo_lj | Power Outages

I don't know how to go about researching this without getting on a terrorist watch list, haha.

I'm trying to write a mass power outage into my story. But I need to know:

Would outages happen on a city by city basis, or could something happen to make an entire state lose electricity?
If said outage were to happen, what could cause it?
I'm sure this depends on the cause of the outage, but worst case scenario, how long would people be without power?
What types of buildings have backup generators to insure they will still have power in case of emergency? Hospitals and jails, I'm sure, but what else? Would a bank have a backup generator to keep the alarms going and the safe locked if the power's out?

The story is taking place in the USA. I Googled "National Grid USA" and found that there's a company by that name that manages just a few states. So am I correct in assuming there is no large-scale utility authority that manages the entire country? That's fine, it just makes my job harder, because I will have to write in several smaller outages instead of just POOFing everyone's electricity, haha.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm glad I cold help! My husband answered your questions with probably more info than you needed, but here is what he said:

1. Where would outages happen? A brief background first. The “power grid” is actually many, many smaller grids (or networks) that have some degree of interconnection. There is currently (no pun intended J ) no way to store the electricity produced by a power plant, regardless of whether it is hydro, coal, nuclear, solar, or whatever. The inputs of power to each grid must match the power taken out (including the loss due to resistance in the wires, etc). One way to think of a grid is a dam (or other water source) connected to a network of pipes or irrigation ditches – if more is taken out than is put in, not only do some consumers not get what they need, but because of a loss of water pressure, some parts of the system cease to function! Going back to the electrical grid, the interconnections allow operators (humans or automatic programs) to transfer power from or to other grids/sources, or to sever the connections to prevent failures from spreading. (If you want to research more details, try www.bpa.gov, the Bonneville Power Administration’s web site.)

So, with that in mind, a “mass” outage would require those safety measures to be overwhelmed in some way. In the case of California’s rolling blackouts a few summers ago, it was a combination of increased demand (air conditioning, higher population, etc), with both real and contrived supply shortages. The operators had to keep the demand in line with the supply, or the whole system would have collapsed. For an entire state to completely lose electricity, the “local” power generation would have to be shut down, as well as the lines that connected it to other states’ grids (since they have to be able to carry a huge amount of electricity, those connections are expensive to construction and therefore there are not an excess of them).

2. What could cause that? I could spin all sorts of doomsday scenarios, so here are a few examples.

a. Electro-Magnetic Pulse. This was a favorite scenario to imagine during the cold war. Anyway, a large, atmospheric atomic blast would either destroy the electrical distribution infrastructure directly or induce a current to overwhelm and destroy grid components in a huge area.

b. Solar storms. Storms on the sun send drastically increased streams of charged particles toward the earth, which damage or destroy sensitive electronics.

c. Terrorism. Deliberate damage/destruction of power generation facilities and grid interconnections.

d. Corporate greed. Just look at what Enron did. They were trying to create an artificial shortage so that states would have to buy from them at very inflated prices. If, while they were manipulating the market, some real accident or event occurred, the entire system may have failed.

e. Incompetence/stupidity. When the price of copper went up in recent years, there was a rash of thefts of electrical wiring, transformers, etc., both in inventory and in use. There are those who would be happy to have all the coal-fired power plants (or nuclear, etc.) shut down immediately, consequences be damned.

3. You are right that it depends on the reason the power was out. Here, we had a very severe wind storm in late 2006. I think 90% of our customers were without power. Due to round-the-clock efforts by our crews (and any other crews that we could borrow or hire), that number was down to about 20% (or 6000 customers) within 72 hours. The rest were without power for a week or longer. From an operations standpoint, the crews have to be able to do the repairs safely (so if your scenario involves a natural disaster, war, etc, the start of repairs might be substantially delayed). Also, the backbones have to be repaired first (the high voltage lines). As far as priorities go, hospitals, public works (roads), police and fire have to be restored first. I hope you get the idea.

4. Backup power generators. Many places have backup power, especially in areas where seasonal outages are common (heavy snow, etc). Places like banks might, but they might also have systems in place where the vault is impossible to open without the power being on. Many places have battery backups for alarms (like jewelry stores), but they only last for so long. Police stations, fire stations, power companies, data centers, government installations concerned with emergency management (like FEMA), and the like, usually have back up power generation. The thing is that the backup power capacity is not unlimited, nor is the stored fuel. Business managers spend what they think is prudent for what they expect to happen – be that for a few hours or a few days.

WOW, I can't thank you enough for even asking, much less typing all that out! You're so kind. And your husband, too, for answering all that. That information is infinitely helpful! The power outage is really the vehicle that gets the whole story going, so I'm glad I have lots of info about it now. It's interesting stuff to know in general, too. Virtual hugs, thanks so much!

Completely unrelated to the original topic, but reading through this made me think of a potential problem for my solar-powered spaceship.

My crew had best keep an eye on solar flares...

...good thing they've got those massive ramscoops to collect and store energy for their backups! *wipes brow* But now I definitely foresee a solar storm in my novel's future...

Power Outages

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Wow, he wrote so much I couldn't fit it in one reply!

Re: Wow, he wrote so much I couldn't fit it in one reply!

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